All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.
amusements, environment, history, links, medical, natural history, science, sexuality

Monthly Links for December

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So here we are with the last round of Monthly Links for 2024, and were ending with a fairly bumper bundle …

Science, Technology, Natural World

dog-like ancestral mammal

Let’s start off with Quanta Magazine‘s reviews of science during the year. [All are LONG READS]
The Year in Physics
The Year in Biology
The Year in Maths
The Year in Computer Science
For some reason Quanta don’t cover chemistry or medicine.

There’s this idea in theoretical physics that we are living in a simulation, driven by some higher powers. And now there is a possible new law of physics which could support this.

The mathematics of random gatherings is a bit of a riddle.

Exponential growth can be somewhat counter intuitive.

Meanwhile scientists have tossed 350,757 coins to prove that they’re not 50/50 heads/tails and that a fair coin is probably impossible.

By most standards our modern atomic clocks are pretty accurate, but they’re about to be superseded by nuclear clocks which are orders of magnitude even more accurate.

Somewhat at the other extreme there’s an ancient piece of space hardware which is surprisingly still working well beyond it’s intended lifespan.

Talking of space hardware, there’s growing concern at the quantity of space junk left flying about up above, and how it could destroy all possibility of further space missions.

There are, as NASA have discovered, a whole host of so-called “dark comets” flying about above our heads.

Let’s come back to earth, or rather the sea … a strange, previously unknown, predatory crustacean has been found miles deep in an ocean trench off the west coat of South America.

Land predators aren’t going to be left out … the 280-million-year-old fossil of a dog-like predator which is likely one of our oldest mammal ancestors, has been found in Spain (above).

From dogs to cats … scientists have made a lot of progress unravelling the complex genetics of ginger cats.

ginger kitten

Finally in this section, Independent SAGE, which was formed early in the pandemic to communicate good and transparent science, have been doing some navel-gazing to see what they could have done better. There are two summaries by Kit Yates of the published research paper: activities and organisation and lessons learnt.

Health, Medicine

Although it’s now a bit late for Christmas 2024, here are some generally applicable ways, from a GP, to avoid some common health hazards.

The science and medical community are getting worried about a possible pandemic of H5N1 bird flu. But how close are we really close to a pandemic?

Meanwhile Bob Hawkins is writing a series of four articles on how one models a pandemic in order to understand how various scenarios play out. Here’s part 1, part 2 and part 3.

Here’s a look at why it makes sense to vaccinate boys against HPV.

Poliovirus has been found in wastewater in Spain, Germany and Poland. How important is this?

One of our most common symbols of Christmas, mistletoe, provides a number of therapeutic agents.

The Vagus Nerve, our most complex nerve, is responsible for the messaging associated with many of our organs, but it’s role in mental health is also being unravelled. [££££] [LONG READ]

Sexuality

It seems that sexual identity is much more fluid than we previously thought.

Sex educators provide 16 ways to talk to your children about bodies, porn and consent.

Environment

beaver kits

Here are five UK biodiversity success stories.

So what does happen to the natural world when people disappear? [LONG READ]

Carbon-positive gardening in your own back yard.

Hunting wildlife to remove them doesn’t work: hunt more coyote, get more coyote.

coyote

Social Sciences, Business, Law, Politics

So how much do we know about really old people, and how reliable is it? [LONG READ]

Sweden is almost a cashless society, and that’s not good for who are left out.

Art, Literature, Language, Music

As one had always suspected, “Word of the Year” is a marketing gimmick which tells us nothing about the actual state of the world.

Many authors place imaginary books within their own real books. Now there’s an exhibition in New York which brings some of these imaginary works of literature to life.

History, Archaeology, Anthropology

Let’s start off with a summary of ten fascinating archaeological discoveries of 2024. [LONG READ]

It seems highly likely that the first tools were made from plants, not rocks; but it is difficult to prove. [££££] [LONG READ]

A Bronze Age pit in Somerset has revealed evidence not just of mass murder, but also cannibalism.

Back around 4500 years ago, the area which is now Iran is known to have had a number of sophisticated board games including the Royal Game of Ur; and of course there are no manuals. Now two researchers have looked at another of these games, which has not just the board but also many of the pieces, and worked out a possible set of rules for the game. (If you really want brain-ache, follow the link to the preprint paper at the end of the linked article for a detailed explanation.)

In Norway, a number of Viking women’s graves have revealed jewellery, coins, and a ‘vulva stone’

An archaeological site in Kent is turning up lots of Anglo-Saxon finds, including a remarkably well preserved sixth-century sword.

Two articles on the plethora of archaeological finds from the reconstruction of Notre Dame. First from Science and second from Good News Network.

Unexpectedly, letters from Elizabeth I, Benjamin Franklin and Lord Byron are among a collection discovered in British stately home.

Around the globe there are around 8,500 shipwrecks from WWI and WWII, and many are now a ticking time-bomb of pollution, or worse.
Polluting shipwrecks are the ticking time-bomb at the bottom of our oceans.

Food, Drink

Now here’s a curiosity … Diamond Geezer has discovered that the British are drinking a lot less tea than 50 years ago, but coffee consumption is about the same.

cup of tea

Lifestyle, Personal Development, Beliefs

People have always needed to make sense of the world within their knowledge span, so they end up believing all sorts of things which later generations reveal to be rubbish.

Here are three articles from Corey S Powell in which he takes a cosmic look at thought …
Perspective from the stars
You Are a Ripple of Information
Your information bubble is your legacy

How Polynesian voyagers navigate Earth’s biggest ocean.

So just why don’t more women choose to propose to their male partners? Spoiler: patriarchy.

Once they reach 40 many women become invisible to men, and they won’t all accept it. [££££]

Another look at why women wear bras.

And finally for this year … ten reasons why you need to sunbathe naked.

nude sunbather

amusements

Annual Impossible Exam 2024

As is traditional, once again we bring you this year’s King William’s College General Knowledge Paper 2024-25.

For over a century the College has set an annual general knowledge test, known as the General Knowledge Paper. The pupils sit the test twice: once unseen on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again when they return to school in the New Year – after spending the holiday researching the answers. The test used to be mandatory but these days participation is voluntary.

The quiz is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers from the list of several hundred. The best scores are around 12% for the unseen test and about 70% for the second attempt – and of course the average scores are going to be very much lower than this.

The quiz is always introduced with the Latin motto Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est, “To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition” – something my father always impressed on me as “Education is not knowing, it is knowing where to find out”.

You can find this year’s GKP on the King William’s College website at https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2024/12/GKP_2024_25.pdf.

I’ve not yet tried this year’s test myself, but unseen I don’t normally have many more clues that the KWC pupils!

Enjoy your Christmas!

quotes

Monthly Collected Quotes

How have we got to our last monthly collection of quotes for 2024?

The secret of freedom lies in educating people, whereas the secret of tyranny is in keeping them ignorant.
[Maxímilíen Robespierre]

I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time – when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness.
The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.
[Carl Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark, 1995]

I woke up out of the ether with an utterly abandoned feeling, and asked the nurse right away if it was a boy or a girl. She told me it was a girl, and so I turned my head away and wept. “All right,” I said, “I’m glad it’s a girl. And I hope she’ll be a fool – that’s the best thing a girl can be in this world, a beautiful little fool.”
[F Scott Fitzgerald; The Great Gatsby]

My naked body is not a sexual display. It is simply a normal, natural, living part of me.
[unknown]

Science is not the truth. Science is finding the truth. When science changes its opinion it didn’t lie to you. It learned more.
[Brené Brown; Atlas of the Heart]

I will die. You will die. We will all die and the universe will carry on without care. All that we have is that shout in the wind – how we live. How we go. And how we stand before we fall.
[Pierce Brown; Art of Poets]

… understand it as well as I may, my comprehension can only be an infinitesimal fraction of all I want to understand.
[Ada Lovelace]

This book is about the endless dance between progress and inequality, about how progress creates inequality, and how inequality can sometimes be helpful – showing others the way, or providing incentives for catching up – and sometimes unhelpful – when those who have escaped protect their positions by destroying the escape routes behind them.
[Angus Deaton]

All things on earth only exist in different stages of becoming garbage. Your house is a garbage processing centre where you buy new things, bring them into your house, and slowly crapify them over time. Objects start at the highest level, visible in a living area. From there it goes down to a closet cupboard or drawer; that’s only why we have these, so we don’t have to see all the huge mistakes we have made. From the closet it goes to the garage – one of the longest phases in trashification; no object has ever made it out of the garage and back into the house – or a personal storage unit. This is the saddest of all. Now instead of free garbage you pay rent to visit your garbage.
[Mike and Joelle; https://www.facebook.com/mikeandjoelleofficial/reels/]

And if you think that a bit of placebo effect, encouragement by equipment sellers, wishful thinking and downright magical thinking was involved I would have trouble disagreeing with you.
[Dr Rowley Cottingham]